Geography

Kazakhstan lies in the north of the central
Asian republics and is bounded by Russia in the north, China in the east,
Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan in the south, and the Caspian Sea and part of
Turkmenistan in the west. It has almost 1,177 mi (1,894 km) of coastline
on the Caspian Sea. Kazakhstan is about four times the size of Texas. The
territory is mostly steppe land with hilly plains and plateaus.

Government

Republic.

History

The indigenous Kazakhs were a nomadic Turkic
people who belonged to several divisions of Kazakh hordes. They grouped
together in settlements and lived in dome-shaped tents made of felt called
yurts.
Their tribes migrated seasonally to find pastures for their
herds of sheep, horses, and goats. Although they had chiefs, the Kazakhs
were rarely united as a single nation under one great leader. Their tribes
fell under Mongol rule in the 13th century and they were dominated by
Tartar khanates until the area was conquered by Russia in the 18th
century.

The area became part of the Kirgiz Autonomous
Republic formed by the Soviet authorities in 1920, and in 1925 this
entity's name was changed to the Kazakh Autonomous Soviet Socialist
Republic (Kazakh ASSR). After 1927, the Soviet government began forcing
the nomadic Kazakhs to settle on collective and state farms, and the
Soviets continued the czarist policy of encouraging large numbers of
Russians and other Slavs to settle in the region.

Owing to the region's intensive agricultural
development and its use as a testing ground for nuclear weapons by the
Soviet government, serious environmental problems developed by the late
20th century. Along with the other central Asian republics, Kazakhstan
obtained its independence from the collapsing Soviet Union in 1991.
Kazakhstan proclaimed its membership in the Commonwealth of Independent
States on Dec. 21, 1991, along with ten other former Soviet republics. In
1993, the country overwhelmingly approved the Nuclear Non-Proliferation
Treaty. President Nursultan Nazarbayev restructured and consolidated many
operations of the government in 1997, eliminating a third of the
government's ministries and agencies. In 1997, the national capital was
changed from Almaty, the largest city, to Astana (formerly Aqmola).